BRAINTREE – At midmorning the activity room at Alliance Healthcare was filled and animated. As old pops hits like “La Bamba” and “Tequila” played from a boom box, a dozen elderly residents, mostly women,shared greetings and balloon tosses with seven teenagers.

The young visitors were all from Braintree High School’s Project PROVE, a program for special-needs students. They visit Alliance four days a week during the summer. Starting with a morning greeting when they arrive, they also join the senior citizens for bowling, cooking and other activities.

“They make you feel good,” said Genevieve Dittimar, who’s 91 and the president of Alliance’s resident council.

Project PROVE students have been out in the town for such activities for decades. Besides the Alliance visits, this year’s group of 24 have helped seniors with their grocery shopping, done landscaping at Pond Meadow Park, and worked at town hall. They’ve accompanied Alliance residents on outings to events and places such as the Boston Expo flower show and the Franklin Park Zoo, and on Christmas shopping trips.

Several who’ve graduated but are still under 22 have jobs at the local Roche Bros. supermarket and other businesses. One of them, Mark Belton, has also worked at the town fire station. Jaden Ford, a 2014 Braintree High graduate, runs his own online business, selling soaps, candles and ornaments.

Ford’s mother, Kristen Ford-Hernandez, said all those extracurricular activities are invaluable for Ford and the others to develop what she calls “life skills” – organizing their days, following a schedule, and being able to do such things as shop for themselves.

“That give me great peace of mind,” she said.

Ford-Hernandez said Project PROVE’s staff has also been “a huge help” in developing her son’s website, ACTabilities.com – as the program has been in placing other students in jobs around town.

“Jobs are scarce for (special-needs) people 16 to 22,” she said.

Ford could leave the program, but he says he wants to stay with it as a post-grad.

“It’s one of the best programs,” he said.

While he’s focused on his website these days, he looks forward to the Alliance Healthcare visits – especially bowling with residents like Dittmar.

“They really appreciate it,” he said. “It feels good to help them out.”

Ford has the rare CDG syndrome, the congenital disorder of glycosylation, which causes metabolic disorders. He’s been in Project PROVE all through high school, after participating in Braintree’s middle-school program for special-needs students. His fellow Project PROVE students have Down syndrome and other learning disabilities.

Page 2 of 2 - Braintree High started the program – the name of which stands for Pre-Occupational Vocational Education – in 1972, in the early years of a national move to include special-needs students in regular school settings. Since then, students like Jaden Ford have become familiar figures around town.

At the fire station, Fire Chief James O’Brien said 22-year-old Mark Belton has become “like one of the guys” over the past couple of years by helping firefighters clean the trucks and engines and even sitting in on training sessions.

“He got a taste of the brotherhood,” O’Brien said, “and I think we gave him a sense of responsibility.”

Back at Alliance Healthcare, activity director Kara Perkins said the students bring “a lot of energy” to their visits – and they widen the residents’ social circle, which otherwise is mostly family members and the Alliance staff.

Dittmar said that’s another reason she looks forward to the sessions.

“It’s good to mix the age groups,” she said.

Perkins said the facility and its residents are already planning for the mid-August cookout they hold for the Project PROVE students every summer – “a thank you for what they do,” Perkins said.

Reach Lane Lambert at llambert@ledger.com Follow him on Twitter @LLambert_Ledger.